2 home offices

[528 designs]

Hi, for the first 5 months of the year, I was using my home office in the house as well as our 2 car garage and some other areas foor my business. I estimate about 1200 sf total. In that time, we built a shop on our property and I stopped using areas of the house and moved everything to the new shop, so that the last 7 months of the year, I was using about 500 sf of the house and the entire shop (2nd home office) which is 1440 square feet,  How do I tell turbo tax this, since the percentage of my 1st home office changes during the year, or does it really matter?

[JeffreyR77]

TurboTax will allow you to enter information for using the first home office for the first 5 months of the year with the 1200 sf compared to the total homesize (excludind new shop). 

Bear in mind to qualify these spaces needed to be in use solely and exclusively for your business during those 5 months.  Then you will need to add a second home office for the new stand alone shop. 

You may have a difference in expenses that are directly attributable to the new shop ( if it is metered separate for example for water and electric )  or you have a different total sq footage when you add the new shop to the old total sq footage to come up with a percentage of use for common usage items. 

I think you will see it does really matter.

[528 designs]

So, when I enter the information on my second home office, even though I have designated that it is a seperate structure, Turbo Tax wants me to depreciate the house again. Or do I now enter the information for only the new building? Since I depreciate that under business assets, Im a little confused,

[Irene2805]

TurboTax is asking you the total square footage of the house, just to determine what percentage of the house expenses to include with the new office.

When calculating depreciation for the new structure, include the square footage of the structure with the square footage of the house.  Then enter the square footage of the structure itself.